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In this new account of the Golden Age of children's fiction, Marah Gubar offers a redefinition of the phenomenon known as the 'cult of the child'. Artful Dodgers looks at the works of Lewis Carroll, Frances Hodgson Burnett, and J. M. Barrie - authors traditionally criticized for arresting the child in a position of iconic innocence - and contends that they in fact rejected this simplistic "child of Nature" paradigm in favor of one based on the child as anartful collaborator. Resisting the Romantic tendency to imagine the child as a pure point of origin, they acknowledge the pervasive power of adult influence, while suggesting that children can and have shared in the shaping of their stories. In her examinations of such classics as Alice's Adventures inWonderland, Treasure Island, and The Secret Garden, Gubar uncovers a childhood culture of collaboration in Victorian England in which the ability to work and play alongside adults was often taken for granted. True, this era saw a host of new efforts to establish a strict dividing line between childhood and adulthood, innocence and experience. But despite strenuous reform efforts, many Victorians remained unconvinced of the separateness and sanctity of childhood, including the most influentialparticipants in the cult of the child. Long condemned for erecting a barrier of sentimental nostalgia between adult and child, many late Victorians are here shown to have resisted this trend by instead conceiving of the child as uniquely capable of artistic and intellectual partnership.

Children's literature, English --- English literature --- Adolescence in literature. --- History and criticism. --- Adolescence in literature --- Children in literature

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Since 2012, Public Books has championed a new kind of community for intellectual engagement, discussion, and action. An online magazine that unites the best of the university with the openness of the internet, Public Books is where new ideas are debuted, old facts revived, and dangerous illusions dismantled. Here, young scholars present fresh thinking to audiences outside the academy, accomplished authors weigh in on timely issues, and a wide range of readers encounter the most vital academic insights and explore what they mean for the world at large.Think in Public: A Public Books Reader presents a selection of inspiring essays that exemplify the magazine's distinctive approach to public scholarship. Gathered here are Public Books contributions from today's leading thinkers, including Jill Lepore, Imani Perry, Kim Phillips-Fein, Salamishah Tillet, Jeremy Adelman, Nathan Connolly, Namwali Serpell, and Ursula K. Le Guin. The result is a guide to the most exciting contemporary ideas about literature, politics, economics, history, race, capitalism, gender, technology, and climate change by writers and researchers pushing public debate about these topics in new directions. Think in Public is a lodestone for a rising generation of public scholars and a testament to the power of knowledge.

English literature --- Literature, Victorian --- Victorian literature